Highlights

On a Sunday morning in the autumn of 1944, Idaho native Ben Brooks settled into his foxhole in liberated Luxembourg to write a letter while the rest of his squad attended Mass. A range-setter with the 457th Coast Artillery Battalion which had landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day a few months prior, Brooks described what happened next as his “greatest experience in the Army.”

WASHINGTON – Like many high school graduates, Katelynn Janes, of Cheney, made big plans last June: move out of the house, study psychology and eventually counsel young people who have chronic physical ailments. Kidney failure didn’t make the list. But in December, after months of being lethargic and unable to eat, tests showed her blood was filling with toxins. She needed dialysis right away.

The fissure is growing among the three Republicans serving on the usually lock-step Spokane County Commission. A political battle over the proposed sales tax increase to fund public transit has prompted allegations by Al French that his colleagues used personal cellphones to circumvent public meeting laws. Commissioners Todd Mielke and Shelly O’Quinn deny those claims and say the political cracks may run deeper than a controversial ballot measure.

Shane Jenkins paddled to the middle of a bay on Long Lake at Nine Mile Falls. His broad shoulders rose from the surface, then his life-jacketed torso and finally the dual jets fastened to his feet, shooting water with the power of more than 150 horses and propelling Jenkins almost 30 feet in the air. This is Jenkins’ second week with the flyboard, a relatively new entry into the world of water sports. Jenkins and his friend, Mike Grytdal, both rural Spokane County firefighters, are offering lessons in their free time after contracting with AV Watersports, based in Bellevue, to offer the attraction in Eastern Washington. For $90, a waiver signature and some brief safety training, thrill-seekers can experience 30 minutes of “flight time” themselves. The equipment has already caused awe on the lake waters among boaters and Jenkins’ neighbors, who are unaccustomed to swimmers rising from the waves like dolphins.

The lawlessness, big money and complex business dealings of the North Dakota oil fields likely prompted the shooting death of a South Hill man in his home last month, according to investigators. Spokane police detectives stitched together an intricate web of speculative business deals by Doug Carlile, who solicited hundreds of thousands of dollars each from several investors to get in on the ground floor of a piece of Indian reservation land with the potential to produce billions of dollars worth of crude, according to one speculator.